Georg Elser

In 2008, a music venue called Georg Elser Hallen was demolished in Munich. However, as of 2014, there were five venues in Munich bearing the name Georg Elser Hallen. In 2011, a 17-metre (56 ft) steel sculpture of Georg Elser was unveiled in Berlin, by German playwright Rolf Hochhuth. The memorial, which cost 200,000 euros, was built on Hochhuth's initiative, after the city authorities dismissed the project as too expensive. In the end, the Berlin state senate financed the Elser sculpture. In September 1979, the Bürgerbräukeller was demolished. On its site now stands the GEMA Building, the Gasteig Cultural Centre and the Munich City Hilton Hotel. A plaque in the pavement at the entrance to the GEMA Building marks the position of the pillar that concealed Elser's bomb. 8. November 1939 is the name of the Johann Georg Elser Memorial in Munich to commemorate the resistance fighters fighting against the Nazis. The monument is located in the Maxvorstadt district.

There are at least 60 streets and places named after Elser in Germany and several monuments. Claus Christian Malzahn wrote in 2005: 'That he was for so long ignored by the historians of both East and West Germany, merely goes to show just how long it took Germany to become comfortable with honestly confronting its own history. Johann Georg Elser, though, defied ideological categorization—and for that reason, he is a true German hero.'

The Georg Elser Prize was established in 2001. It is awarded every two years to individuals who have demonstrated civil courage or civil disobedience against injustice committed by the state.

The story of Elser is commemorated in the 1989 film Seven Minutes (German: Georg Elser – Einer aus Deutschland) directed by Klaus Maria Brandauer, and the 2015 film 13 Minutes (German: Elser), directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel.

Five days of torture, 19–23 November, produced the Gestapo Protokoll (interrogation report). The document was signed off by Kappler, Schmidt and Seibold for the "Kriminalkommissare". Buried in the German archives in Koblenz until 1964, this report is now considered the most important source of information on Elser. The report did not mention the interrogation of Elser's family members and Elsa Härlen in Berlin, as the report contains only the answers Elser gave to his interrogators. On the vital question that he was the sole instigator, Elser had this to say:

Elser's lover Elsa Härlen said Elser "led a double life and completely separated his political life from his private life". In an interview in 1959, she said she did not want any restitution from the government of the Federal Republic, as "it was those gypsies that were there before" — meaning the Nazis — that had brought her harm. Generally his family had difficulty coming to terms with his confession as the sole instigator. In 1950, his mother continued to lay the blame on others saying: "I don't think my son would come up with anything like that on his own".

In 1954, SS-Oberscharführer Theodor Bongartz, the man in charge of the crematorium at Dachau, was determined to have been the murderer of Georg Elser, during a German court proceeding in which SS-Unterscharführer Edgar Stiller was on trial as an accessory to murder. As the SS man in charge of the special prisoners at Dachau from 1943 to 1945, Stiller was accused of escorting Elser to the crematorium where he was allegedly shot by Bongartz. Theodor Bongartz was not brought to account as he had died of an illness in 1945.

Elser has been the subject of rumours and various conspiracy theories since the Bürgerbräukeller bombing. After the war, Protestant pastor and theologian Martin Niemöller, also in custody in the "bunker" at Sachsenhausen, gave credence to the rumour that Elser had been a member of the SS and that the whole assassination attempt had been staged by the Nazis to portray Hitler as being protected by Providence. Many others, like quarry owner Georg Vollmer, building on his dead wife's contribution, weighed in with their version of the truth. In 1948, Allen Welsh Dulles, the future Director of Central Intelligence (de facto head of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency) summed up a range of conspiracy theories when he wrote:

In his 1947 book, To The Bitter End, Hans Bernd Gisevius commented on the order:

Elser's apparent preferential treatment, which included extra rations and daily visits to the camp barber for a shave, aroused interest amongst other prisoners, including British SIS officer Payne Best. He wrote later that Elser was also allowed regular visits to the camp brothel. Martin Niemöller was also a special inmate in the Sachsenhausen "bunker" and believed the rumours that Elser was an SS man and an agent of Hitler and Himmler. Elser kept a photo of Elsa Härlen in his cell. In early 1945, Elser was transferred to the bunker at Dachau concentration camp.

In April 1945, with German defeat imminent, the Nazis' intention of staging a show trial over the Bürgerbräukeller bombing had become futile. Hitler ordered the execution of special security prisoner "Eller" — the name used for Elser in Dachau — along with Wilhelm Canaris, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others who had plotted against him. The order, dated 5 April 1945, from the Gestapo HQ in Berlin, was addressed to the Commandant of the Dachau concentration camp, SS-Obersturmbannführer Eduard Weiter.

The order came into the possession of Captain S. Payne Best in May 1945, and appeared in Best's book, The Venlo Incident. That part of the order relating to Elser reads:

On 9 April 1945, four weeks before the end of the war in Europe, Georg Elser was shot dead and his fully dressed body immediately burned in the crematorium of Dachau Concentration Camp. He was 42 years old.

Waldenmaier, the owner of the Waldenmaier armaments factory in Heidenheim, was more fortunate than Vollmer. With the backing of the Abwehr in 1944, he received the War Service Cross First Class for significant contributions to the war effort. In 1940, a Gestapo man had told him: "In spite of repeated torture, Elser had stuck to his story that he had carried out the attack in order to save the working people and the entire world from war."

In contrast to the conspirators of the 20 July 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler, Elser was barely acknowledged in the official commemorative culture of the Federal Republic of Germany until the 1990s. A breakthrough to a positive way of looking at Elser came with the publication of a biography by Hellmut G. Haasis in 1999 followed by an expanded and revised edition in 2009. Since 2001, every two years the Georg-Elser Prize is awarded for courage, and on the occasion of Elser's 100th Birthday in January 2003, Deutsche Post issued a special stamp.

The basement cells of the Berlin Gestapo Headquarters were notorious for the inhumane treatment of prisoners. It was rumoured Elser was kept imprisoned on the top floor until January or February 1941.

The quarry owner Georg Vollmer and his employees were severely beaten during Gestapo interrogations. Sentenced to 20 years in Welzheim concentration camp for negligence in dealing with explosive materials, Vollmer was released in 1941 after his wife petitioned Rudolf Hess through old connections. Losing her mind in fear her husband would be taken away again, she died six months after his release. Prior to her death she started a rumor that a Zurich music dealer named Kuch, with a group of three Communists, had put Elser up to the assassination attempt.

Elser never faced a trial for the bombing of the Bürgerbräukeller. After his year of torment at Berlin Gestapo Headquarters, he was kept in special custody in Sachsenhausen concentration camp between early 1941 and early 1945. At Sachsenhausen, Elser was held in isolation in a T-shaped building reserved for protected prisoners. Accommodated in three joined cells, each 9.35 m, there was space for his two full-time guards and a work space to make furniture and other things, including several zithers.

Elser was a carpenter and cabinet maker by trade and a member of the left-leaning Federation of Woodworkers Union. He also joined the Red Front Fighters' Association, although he told his interrogators in 1939 that he attended a political assembly no more than three times while a member. He also stated that he voted for the Communist Party until 1933, as he considered the KPD to be the best defender of workers' interests. There is evidence that Elser opposed Nazism from the beginning of the regime in 1933; he refused to perform the Hitler salute, did not join others in listening to Hitler's speeches broadcast on the radio, and did not vote in the elections or referendums during the Nazi era.

Elser's parents were Protestant, and he attended church with his mother as a child, though his attendance lapsed. His church attendance increased during 1939, after he had decided to carry out the assassination attempt, either at a Protestant or Roman Catholic church. He claimed that church attendance and the recitation of the Lord's Prayer calmed him. He told his arresting officers: "I believe in the survival of the soul after death, and I also believed that I would not go to heaven if I had not had an opportunity to prove that I wanted good. I also wanted to prevent by my act even greater bloodshed."

During four days of interrogation in Berlin (19–22 November 1939), Elser articulated his motive to his interrogators:

In April–May 1939, Elser found a labouring job at the Vollmer quarry in Königsbronn. While there, he collected an arsenal of 105 blasting cartridges and 125 detonators, causing him to admit to his interrogators, "I knew two or three detonators were sufficient for my purposes, but I thought the surplus will increase the explosive effect." Living with the Schmauder family in Schnaitheim he made many sketches, telling his hosts he was working on an "invention".

Elser arrived in Munich on 5 August 1939. Using his real name, he rented a room in the apartments of two unsuspecting couples, at first staying with the Baumanns and from 1 September, Alfons and Rosa Lehmann. He soon became a regular at the Bürgerbräukeller restaurant for his evening meal. As before, he was able to enter the adjoining Bürgerbräukeller Hall before the doors were locked at about 10:30 p.m.

The high-ranking Nazis who accompanied Adolf Hitler to the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch on 8 November 1939 were Joseph Goebbels, Reinhard Heydrich, Rudolf Hess, Robert Ley, Alfred Rosenberg, Julius Streicher, August Frank, Hermann Esser and Heinrich Himmler. Hitler was welcomed to the platform by Christian Weber.

Discarding the interrogation report that found Elser solely responsible, Hitler proceeded to use the Bürgerbräukeller bombing for propaganda purposes. On 22 November, German newspapers were filled with the story that the assassin, Georg Elser, had been funded by the British Intelligence Service, while the organiser of the crime was Otto Strasser. Photos of two British SIS officers, Richard Henry Stevens and Sigismund Payne Best, captured in the Venlo Incident on 9 November 1939, shared the front page of Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung with a photo of Georg Elser.

The Swiss magazine Appenzeller Zeitung reported on 23 November 1939 that Otto Strasser had denied any knowledge of Elser, Best or Stevens in an interview in Paris. On 13 November, Swiss authorities had expelled Strasser from Switzerland, after he was found to have made disparaging remarks about Hitler in a foreign newspaper in October.

The Munich locksmith Max Niederholer, who had unwittingly supplied Elser with metal parts, was bound and beaten and detained for two weeks by the Gestapo. Being born in London did not help his case. Maria Schmauder's father was subjected to lengthy interrogation, particularly as Elser had admitted to listening to foreign radio stations in his house—even though that practice was not banned until 1 September 1939. Mathilde Niedermann was interrogated over several nights by the Gestapo in 1939. She maintained that Elser was "completely uninterested in politics", even though it was in Konstanz that he became friendly with Communists. Almost sixty years later, Mathilde and Elser's son, Manfred Buhl, spoke at the dedication of the Georg-Elser-Platz in Munich in 1997—the same year he died.

In 1969, historical research by Anton Hoch based on The Gestapo Protokoll (interrogation report) dated 19–23 November 1939, found that Elser had acted alone and there was no evidence to involve the Nazi regime or any outside group in the assassination attempt.

In 1938, Elser's parents bought half of a double house together with their son Leonhard and his wife. Elser felt cheated, and was forced to move out of the house, severing ties with his family except for his sister Maria in Stuttgart. In May 1939, he moved in with the Schmauder family in nearby Schnaitheim.

At Waldenmaier, Elser worked in the shipping department and had access to many parts of the plant, including the "special department" where fuses and detonators were produced. After his arrest and confession, Elser told the Gestapo: "Before the decision to take my action in the fall of 1938, I had stolen neither parts nor powder from the factory."

In order to find out how best to implement his assassination plan, Elser travelled to Munich by train on 8 November 1938, the day of Hitler's annual speech on the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch. Elser was not able to enter the Bürgerbräukeller until 10:30 p.m., when the crowd had dispersed. He stayed until midnight before going back to his lodging. The next morning, he returned to Königsbronn. On the following day, 10 November, the anti-Jewish violence of the Kristallnacht took place in Munich. "In the following weeks I slowly concocted in my mind that it was best to pack explosives in the pillar directly behind the speaker's podium," Elser told his interrogators a year later. He continued to work in the Waldenmaier armament factory in Heidenheim and systematically stole explosives, hiding packets of powder in his bedroom. Realising he needed the exact dimensions of the column to build his bomb he returned to Munich, staying 4–12 April 1939. He took a camera with him, a Christmas gift from Maria Schmauder. He had just become unemployed due to an argument with a factory supervisor.

At around this time, Elser joined a hiking club where he met Elsa Härlen. He moved to lodge in the Härlens' basement, building kitchen cabinets, kitchen chairs and a doll's house for Elsa. Their love affair in the spring of 1936 led to her separation from her husband in 1937 and divorce in 1938.

In 1936, Elser worked with a carpenter named Grupp in Königsbronn, making desks and installing windows, but soon gave up the job, believing the pay was too low. He began working as a labourer at the Waldenmaier armament factory in Heidenheim, commuting by train or by bike from Königsbronn. While working there, he began a friendship with a fellow employee, Maria Schmauder.

Elser met Josef Schurr, a Communist from Schnaitheim, at a Woodworkers Union meeting in Königsbronn in 1933. Elser had extreme views, supported by a letter that Schurr sent to a newspaper in Ulm in 1947 which stated that Elser "was always extremely interested in some act of violence against Hitler and his cronies. He always called Hitler a 'gypsy'—one just had to look at his criminal face."

In August 1932, Elser returned to Königsbronn after receiving a call for help from his mother. His alcoholic father, often violent and abusive towards her, was now heavily in debt. Elser assisted his parents in their work and supplemented his income by making furniture in a home workshop until his father was forced to sell the family property in late 1935. Elser escaped the grim family situation with music, playing flute, accordion, bass and the zither. He joined the Zither Club in Königsbronn in early 1933.

In July, in a secluded orchard owned by his parents, Elser tested several prototypes of his bomb. Clock movements given to him in lieu of wages when leaving Rothmund in Meersburg in 1932 and a car indicator "winker" were incorporated into the "infernal machine". In August, after a bout of sickness, he left for Munich. Powder, explosives, a battery and detonators filled the false bottom of his wooden suitcase. Other boxes contained his clothes, clock movements and the tools of his trade.

In 1930, Elser began commuting daily by ferry from Konstanz to work in the small Rothmund clock factory in Meersburg where he made housings for wall and table clocks. At the Kreuzlingen Free Temperance Union he started a friendship with a seamstress, Hilda Lang. Between May and August 1932, after Rothmund closed down, he lived with several families in Meersburg doing odd carpentry jobs.

In August 1925, a work-friend enticed Elser to go with him to Konstanz to work in a clock factory. Due to lack of work, the clock factory closed down, was sold, then reopened as the Schuckmann Clock Factory. Elser was re-employed, but, along with the other employees, he was dismissed when the factory mysteriously burned down after the owner had unsuccessfully tried to sell the failing business. During this period, Elser shared a room with a Communist co-worker who convinced him to join the Red Front Fighters League. He also joined a traditional dress and dance group (Trachtenverein). In 1929, he found work with Schönholzer, a small woodworking company in Bottighofen, requiring Elser to cross the border daily into Switzerland. The work ran out within six months, however, and he was let go.

In Munich on 9 November, the annual guard of honour for the sixteen "blood martyrs" of the NSDAP who died in the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923 was held at the Feldherrnhalle as usual. Two days later, at the same location, an official ceremony for the victims of the Bürgerbräukeller bombing took place. Hitler returned from Berlin to stand before seven flag-draped coffins as Rudolf Hess addressed the SA guard, the onlookers, and listeners to Grossdeutsche Rundfunk ("Greater German Radio"). In his half-hour oration, Hess was not short on hyperbole:

In 1917, Elser worked half a year assisting in his father's business. Seeking independence, he started an apprenticeship as a lathe operator at the smelter in Königsbronn, but was forced to quit for health reasons. Between 1919 and 1922, he was apprenticed to master woodworker Robert Sapper in Königsbronn. After topping his class at Heidenheim Trade School, he worked in the furniture factory of Paul Rieder in Aalen. In 1925, he left home to briefly work at Wachter woodworking company in the small community of Bernried, near Tettnang. Exploring along Lake Constance on foot, he arrived at Friedrichshafen, where he found employment shaping wooden propellers for the fledgling aircraft manufacturer Dornier.

Georg Elser (the name normally used to refer to him) was born in Hermaringen, Württemberg, to Ludwig Elser and Maria Müller. His parents married one year after his birth, and Maria moved to Königsbronn to live with Ludwig on his smallholding. His father was a timber merchant, while his mother worked on the farm. Georg was often left to care for his five younger siblings: Friederike (born 1904), Maria (born 1906), Ludwig (born 1909), Anna (born 1910) and Leonard (born 1913). He attended elementary school in Königsbronn from 1910 to 1917 and showed ability in drawing, penmanship and mathematics. His childhood was marred by his father's heavy drinking. Elser recalled in his interrogation by the Gestapo in 1939 how his father habitually came home late from work drunk.

Johann Georg Elser (German: [ˈɡeː.ɔʁk ˈɛl.zɐ]] (listen); 4 January 1903 – 9 April 1945) was a German worker who planned and carried out an elaborate assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler and other high-ranking Nazi leaders on 8 November 1939 at the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich (known as the Bürgerbräukeller Bombing). Elser constructed and placed a bomb near the platform from which Hitler was to deliver a speech. It did not kill Hitler, who left earlier than expected, but it did kill 8 people and injured 62 others. Elser was held as a prisoner for more than five years until he was executed at Dachau concentration camp less than a month before the surrender of Nazi Germany.